I distinctly remember being warned against going to Poly.  I was in junior high; and friends told me I would have many shop courses.  They knew that I was not overly apt with power tools but comfortable with hand tools, like a file.

I stuck with my decision, out of stubbornness mostly; and shops I had in variety.

My first homeroom was Webster’s foundry in the cellar.  More than homeroom it was my first practice shop.  We pounded green sand into the cope and the drag, made sprues, and used parting compound.  If we could procure lead, or other low temperature melting metal (I used Babbitt) we made Poly book ends and wall plaques by the thousand, collectively speaking.

It struck me as out of order to be taking pattern making, equivalent to wood shop, after doing foundry, where the patterns were supposed to be used.  I like shaping wood with chisels but was wary of the lathe.  I liked shellacking but didn’t like gluing, both because of the odors.

The layman confuses forge with foundry.  In Elkridge people like to say Dorsey’s forge made cannon for Congress’ army in the revolution; and that’s why we have a Gunn Road.  You can cast cannon; but you can’t make them in a forge.  However, you can make chisels, which we did; and horseshoes, which we didn’t.  At the anvil there was a small gas stove for heating our work to the right color for pounding and shaping.  Hot sparks, hammers pounding, and grinding wheels removing the duck’s foot I didn’t mind; but lighting the gas stove and getting an explosive FWOMP frightened the hell out of me.

There was another bench top gas stove in tin shop, officially sheet metal shop.  We had bending brakes, beading machine, rolling shapers, and the biggest, ugliest block-of-copper soldering irons heated in the gas stove: FWOMP!

So we made tin chimney caps- neat, arty, shiny assemblies with beautiful clean solder beads.  Tinning the iron was an art in itself requiring just the right temperature, rosin flux, and coreless blocks of 60/40.

Machine shop included milling machine and metal lathe work, the latter requiring the warning to put our neckties inside our shirts.  I learned about cutting speeds and knurling in making a machinist’s hammer- all interesting stuff.

In response to the title of this essay I remind you of boiler test day.  Our duties rotated from feed water to electrical output, with coal shoveling in between.  I recall counting the rpm’s of the 7 ton flywheel by allowing one of the Corliss cross head levers to strike my hand-102 times in a minute meant 102 rpm.  Then there was the awkward slipping of the indicator diagram drum-string over a moving post.  The diagrams were delivered to a student who measured the area with a planimeter.  The area was work per stroke, if I remember correctly.

My point is there may be no college preparatory high school in the country that asks 14 to 18 year-olds to exercise skills in these disciplines.  Think of OSHA inspectors reviewing teenagers doing our practice.  I think the potential for injury was present in all the shop courses.  Yet I don’t remember any injury in my classes.  I think we were instructed well and cautioned against idiocy.  Does anyone remember harm coming to themselves or students in their shop classes?